WASHINGTON _ The whistleblower who raised alarms about President Donald Trump pressing a foreign leader to investigate a political rival "did the right thing" and "followed the law every step of the way," the nation's spy chief testified Thursday, pushing back at suggestions that he or she operated for partisan purposes.
Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, appeared at a contentious House committee hearing in which Democrats blasted him for initially failing to disclose the whistleblower's nine-page complaint, which spurred the start of impeachment proceedings against the president this week.
Republicans accused Democrats of mischaracterizing the concerns flagged by the still-unidentified official to smear the president, insisting Trump did nothing wrong.
In his complaint, the whistleblower told the intelligence community's inspector general on Aug. 12 that Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election," according to a copy of the document made public Thursday.
The individual said Trump's actions "pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections."
The inspector general determined that the complaint appeared credible and was of urgent concern, and later forwarded a referral to the Justice Department to determine if the president had violated the law. Prosecutors there decided there was insufficient evidence of a crime.
Maguire's testimony followed the release Wednesday of a White House account of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the center of the whistleblower's complaint.
During the 30-minute call, Trump repeatedly urged Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump couched it as a "favor" after Zelenskiy asked for U.S. weapons to help fight Russian-backed separatists in a long-simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who chairs the House intelligence panel, said Thursday that the whistleblower's complaint supported his interpretation of Trump's demands on the call, which he said "reads like a classic organized crime shakedown."
"We were presented with the most graphic evidence yet that the president of the United States has betrayed his oath of office," Schiff said. "He betrayed his oath to defend our national security and betrayed his oath to defend our Constitution."
Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the committee, dismissed the allegations as insignificant. "I want to congratulate the Democrats on the roll-out of an information warfare operation against the president," he said.
Democrats criticized Maguire for not quickly turning over the complaint to the committee after it was filed last month. They argue he was required to do so under the law.
Maguire testified that because the complaint focused on the president, and not on the intelligence community, it raised legal issues that he felt were "prudent" to work out before sending the complaint to Congress.
He said he consulted with White House lawyers to determine if executive privilege applied. As the White House weighed that issue, he sought legal advice from the Justice Department about whether he was required to share it with Congress.
The Justice Department ruled that the complaint did not address an urgent concern or an intelligence matter, as required under the law, and therefore Maguire was not required to turn it over to lawmakers.
Maguire said he was never ordered not to turn over the complaint and doing so had been left to him.
This put Maguire, a retired Navy admiral who was named acting intelligence chief six weeks ago, in the middle of a brawl between Congress and the executive branch over access to documents and witnesses.
Maguire said he would not rush the complaint to Congress because it was "an unprecedented" and "unique situation" that raised issues about executive privilege, a legal doctrine that protects conversations of the president from disclosure.
When Trump released the White House account of his call with Zelenskiy on Wednesday, Maguire said executive privilege no longer applied and he turned over the complaint that afternoon.
